WASHINGTON — Seventy-five business organizations, including the National Restaurant Association and American Meat Institute, are urging the Department of Homeland Security to move away from "misguided immigration policies."

D.H.S. was contacted by the group in a letter to Secretary Janet Napolitano to avoid economically disruptive immigration raids and to give employers the proper tools and authority to screen workers’ work status before hiring them.

"Strong legal arguments" that the final rules on Social Security Administration’s "no match" letters and E-Verify are illegal were also noted in the letter. D.H.S. tried to implement a punitive regulation that spells out complex procedures to resolve discrepancies between employee names and social security numbers identified in Social Security Administration "no match" letters under the Bush administration.

This coalition of business and labor groups has been fighting the regulation since D.H.S. tried to implement it more than a year ago without performing the necessary study of its impact on small business. The issue has been winding through the federal court system and the federal rulemaking process since then.

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